Experts – about the partial liberalization of the Criminal Code – Economics – Kommersant

The business and expert community is counting on the completion of the project of the Ministry of Justice. “There is a whole group of offenses in the Criminal Code and a group of offenses in the Code of Administrative Offenses, which actually describe the same actions (they only qualify them differently). These are, for example, Article 146 of the Criminal Code (“Infringement of copyright and related rights”), Article 147 (“Infringement of inventive and patent rights”), Article 171 (“Illegal entrepreneurship”), Article 180 (“Illegal use of means of individualization of goods”). Such violations should remain only in the Code of Administrative Offenses and be subject to exclusively economic punishment, for example, in the form of a fine,” notes Business Ombudsman Boris Titov.

The choice of elements of crimes for which the Ministry of Justice proposes to raise the thresholds for prosecution also did not find understanding in the business community. “It is interesting that the ministry raised the thresholds of responsibility for parts 5–7 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which are already extremely rarely used in practice. The most common are parts 3-4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, under which criminal cases are initiated against entrepreneurs, ”says Ekaterina Avdeeva, head of the Expert Center for Criminal Legal Policy and Enforcement of Judicial Acts of Delovaya Rossiya.

According to the director of the Institute for Growth Economics. P. A. Stolypin Anton Sviridenko, there are still no necessary projects to expand the use of collateral, to exclude unreasonable detention of entrepreneurs. “In general, the systemic decriminalization of acts in the field of entrepreneurial activity is overdue. Not because it is not necessary to punish violators, but because often minor violations that do not carry a high public danger are used to put pressure on business, in competition due to the “heavy” norms of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Economic punishment for such offenses will be more effective,” the expert notes.

Meanwhile, businesses are concerned about the problem of initiating criminal cases on tax structures, despite the payment of the arrears in full. It should be noted that the Ministry of Justice has already prepared a draft prohibiting the initiation of such criminal cases, however, before legislative changes (the department expects the draft to be passed in the autumn session of the State Duma), entrepreneurs remain unprotected and continue to complain about unreasonable pressure: this was reported by 73% of those surveyed by the Business Russia Expert Center companies. To prevent this practice, experts insist on introducing a moratorium on the initiation of criminal cases with the timely and full repayment of arrears – a letter with this proposal will be sent to the Federal Tax Service, the Prosecutor General’s Office and other departments. Such a moratorium “will encourage the debtor to repay debts” and will allow “later to challenge it from both sides and within the framework of arbitration proceedings,” Vadim Zaripov, head of the analytical service of the law firm Pepeliaev Group, believes.

Diana Galieva